


Artist/Muse

by PoeticallyIrritating



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 09:12:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1260940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoeticallyIrritating/pseuds/PoeticallyIrritating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosima buys a camera the first time she’s released from the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artist/Muse

**Author's Note:**

> This should really be included as a chapter in my collection of tumblr-prompted obscure words fics, but it got much longer and better than I expected so I felt like it deserved to stand on its own.
> 
> Prompt: cophine, grapholagnia  
> Grapholagnia - The urge to stare at obscene pictures.

Cosima buys a camera the first time she’s released from the hospital. She seems large somehow, expansive and joyful at her newfound freedom. The first night she collapses into her pillows and sleeps for thirteen hours, finally home, and Delphine curls up in a nest of blankets on the floor so as not to disturb her. But the next day they walk to an antique store and Cosima latches onto the twenty-year-old film camera. She’s forgotten her purse; Delphine hands over the forty dollars and tries not to swoon at the broad grin Cosima rewards her with.

“We have to get film,” Cosima insists. “Before we go back.”

Her legs are shaking a little and when she exhales it’s louder than it should be, but she laces her fingers with Delphine’s and Delphine (biting her lip at the guilt that won’t stop twisting her insides) gives in.

Cosima curls up in bed when they get back, burying her head under blankets to block out the early-afternoon sunlight. Delphine makes ratatouille and when Cosima wakes up in the evening she’s hungry and bright-eyed; she sits down at the table with her food and says, “Dude, you’re like the best girlfriend ever.”

Delphine lets Cosima’s smile buoy her up, push back the desperate apologies that lurk behind her lips. (No matter how many times she says she’s sorry it will never be enough.)

After dinner Cosima loads up the camera.

“ _Chérie,_ do you know how to use that? I haven’t seen a camera like that in…” She gestures with one hand, trying to convey how long it’s been since she’s used a camera with film.

“Sure!” Cosima grins. “I had one when I was in middle school. I was obsessed with taking pictures of, like, slugs and stuff.”

Her words startle a laugh from Delphine’s throat. “Slugs?”

Cosima chuckles, too. “Yeah, I don’t know, man. Weird bio nerd phase.” She flops onto the bed, rolls over onto her stomach. “C’mere.” She points the camera at Delphine as she walks over. _Click._ _Click. Click._ Three before she sits up and sets the camera down beside the bed. “Kiss me,” she says, hands reaching for Delphine’s waist.

Delphine lets herself be pulled down onto the bed, and Cosima captures her mouth and moves in, pressing her backwards until her head is resting against the pillows. Delphine reaches out, desperate to touch, to hold—her hands find Cosima’s hips and pull her in closer. Delphine gasps at Cosima’s mouth on her neck, Cosima’s thigh between her legs.

“Cosima,” she murmurs.

“You okay?” Cosima pauses, halting her attempts to remove Delphine’s shirt.

Delphine smiles. “I just wanted to say your name.”

“That…is…sickeningly romantic.” Cosima pulls the shirt over Delphine’s head—the collar catches for a moment on her nose. “And you’re a dork.”

“Dork?” Delphine asks. “Is that like…nerd?”

“Kinda.” Cosima kisses her belly, laughing against the skin. Her fingers fumble at Delphine’s waistband, but she gets the button undone and slides them down over her hips. She hums. “You…should take off your bra.”

Delphine raises her eyebrows at Cosima, who’s discarding Delphine’s pants and her own shirt.

“Hey, if I’m going to be down here doing all the work, at least give me a nice view.”

The laughter bubbles out of her unbidden, and she obligingly unhooks the offending piece of lingerie and tosses it onto the floor. Cosima’s fingers trace the length of Delphine’s legs as she pulls down her underwear—and then Cosima is kissing her way back up her legs, nipping gently at her thighs. Delphine’s eyes flutter closed. She grips the sheets in her fists.

She stays silent except for the rapid breathing until she remembers: there is no secrecy here, no irritable neighbors on the other side of paper-thin walls, and there’s something gorgeous and freeing and desperately satisfying about letting out a moan, about gasping _Cosima Cosima Cosima_ as she shudders under her mouth.

When Delphine falls slack against the sheets, Cosima grins up at her. “Hold still.”

“ _Chérie,_ what are you—”

She leans over the side of the bed and emerges with the camera. Delphine opens her mouth to speak, but Cosima hushes her. “Seriously. It was a really good view.” She settles between Delphine’s thighs again, on her elbows. _Click._

Delphine closes her eyes, too sleepy and satisfied to protest. She can feel Cosima moving around on the bed, hear the shutter going off.

When she’s out of film, she settles down against Delphine, resting her head on her chest.

-

Cosima keeps a box of used film on her desk, saving it for when she can get a bulk rate to have it developed. She takes pictures of everything—the sun-soaked view through the window, the hallway outside her apartment, the plants that sprout up in cracks in the sidewalk—but her favorite subject is Delphine.

“You’re making me very vain,” Delphine says, laughing, as Cosima poses her against the side of a brick building.

“Well, it’s not my fault you’re so photogenic.”

Cosima doesn’t like to take the camera to the hospital, and the box starts to lie untouched for longer and longer stretches. (The first time she goes back, Delphine asks if she wants the camera. She says, “I don’t want to remember this.”)

Whenever she’s discharged, the camera is the first thing she asks for. She tries to rub the worry lines from Delphine’s face. Begs her to smile. “For the camera,” she says, and sticks out her tongue, making faces until Delphine laughs. _Click._

And then the film box is abandoned. The camera lies discarded beside it. Cosima stays in the hospital room for a while, but before long the hospital room is empty too. Delphine pulls her legs up to her chest and shudders with horrible sobs, muffling the sound against her knees. They carry out the body, scrub out the tearstains.

-

It’s months before Delphine can stand to have the film developed. When she finally does, at a drugstore offering one-hour service, she spreads the pictures out on her apartment floor. She wipes her tears on her sleeve, trying to keep them from landing on the photos, and sees the images blurred: a patch of flowers improbably growing between slabs of concrete. A quasi-artsy shot of _On the Origin of Species_. A slug, for old time’s sake.

She sees the shot Cosima took from between her legs and flushes bright red. The laughter rises from somewhere deep within her, and the tears are coming too fast for her to wipe them all away.


End file.
